oD Plugs

openDemocracy - Wasting energy Russian-style

ODD Group is short for Open Democracy Discussion Circle, and that title developed from our use of  the Open Democracy website for discussion notes. 

The Leek Discussion Circle

The freedom of the networked (pt 3) by Tony Curzon Price

Extremely interesting discussion on networked and increasingly technocraticsocieties

Open Democracy 28.01.2009 (UK)Open Democracy has translated a mammoth and excoriating essay by historian Yuri Afanasiev from the Novaya Gazeta entitled: "The End of Russia". In it he challenges his fellow Russians to face the truth about their history, which he breaks down into four chapters: "Take a look at what is happening before our very eyes. Take a good, hard look at it - realistically, rationally, in its historical context. If you do that, you start thinking you've gone mad, or at least that you're well on the way to it. If these thoughts seem altogether too terrifying or strange, if you're so confident of your mental state that you can dismiss them, then what you what you are feeling will be no less terrible. For you will be feeling the void enveloping you."

Tony Curzon Price says game theory is a dangerous business that has had its day

Nasrin Alavi in Open Democracy writes: "Iranian society is no longer what it was 30 years ago. Those who once believed no longer do; those who still claim to believe have no credibility; those who never believed have no reason to."

Yet such things are trivial compared to what the internet is doing to our confidence. The internet has created a global psyche. The web has mentally joined us at the hip, so we can no longer put our heads in the sand. If that sounds painfully contorted, it is because it is. Just as no country can decouple itself from the ailing global economy, none of us as individuals can decouple ourselves from the ailing global psyche.

The monument was a response by Slyvia Pankhurst and the sculptor Eric Benfield and is now in danger of being moved due to new building proposals.:: About the monument, the sculptor and Slyvia Pankhurst Open Democracy and Patrick Wright.

Web Debate as Self-Obsessed Point-Scoring Internet | The problem with much Internet debate: “What is striking is that few of the comments really engage with the piece they are supposedly commenting on. Instead, most commentators just engage with each other, often with a viciousness that takes your breath away.” It’s narrow, insular point-scoring rather than a reflective exchange of ideas that might inform a wider audience, an essay says. [Open Democracy]

Let the war on hypocrisy begin Next month, an extraordinary coalition will unite to fight for our liberties. I urge you to join us

Russia says it has started pulling back from Georgian soil, but there are few if any signs that it means business. Therefore, the war is not over yet. Despite this, Neal Ascherson and Ivan Krastev have on openDemocracy already started taking stock of the possible results of the war. I will join them in these attempts - though all of us should understand that while Russia continues trying to change the situation on the ground through military means, any such assessments can only be rather tentative.

Connecting the dots

Tatyana Kosinova, the branch’s founder, wrote on OpenDemocracy.com that she didn’t know what had prompted the raid, but that four of the disks they took contained an archive meant to provide the basis for a “Virtual Gulag Museum”.

Feeling I hadn’t been convincing, I turned it back to him. Don’t you think so, I asked? “Mozhet byt,” he said. Perhaps. And that was as far as we could go.

openDemocracy

The political tensions of the Caucasus are reflected on the ground in a range of obstacles - from roadblocks and closed markets to polarized attitudes, Thomas de Waal writes for openDemocracy.